Spider-Man, Spider-Man, he's got dynamite in his pants...

Long, long ago in a far off land called New York, I worked in the DC Comics production department under the auspices of the remarkable Rick Taylor.

I took the job because I wanted to get work writing for DC and I figured working on staff would help expedite matters. (It didn’t)

The DC production department was composed of a diverse and colorful cast of characters back then. Earlier today I was thinking of one such character, the always-redoubtable Nick Napolitano. The thing that started me thinking of Nick was this stunning piece of art from the upcoming Spider-Man movie.

Pretty cool, eh? Nick and I shared a cubicle for a couple of months and while hunkered over our respective drawing tables we would combat boredom and monotony by often sharing obscure and inane bits of trivia from our pasts. One such nugget of Nick Napolitano trivia that will make me chuckle until the day I die concerned the theme song to the 1960s Spider-Man animated series. Nick confided in me that he had misunderstood the lyrics to the theme song, and for the longest time instead of “Spider-Man, Spider-Man, friendly neighborhood Spider-Man!” he thought the song went, “Spider-Man, Spider-Man, he’s got dynamite in his pants!”

I can’t be too hard on Nick. I guess when you’re a kid the idea that someone with the proportional strength of a spider might need some dynamite from time to time, and hey, the last time I checked Spider-Man didn’t have any pockets in his costume, so why not slip a couple of sticks into your pants. When you’re a kid you find it much easier to justify things like that.